Now, you, me and other Jews also know full well that there's no such entity as a panel of Jewish elders conspiring behind closed doors and drawing up their "protocols." But how, well, stupid must these O.J.s be to have failed to consider how the "optics" (i.e. the utter lack of transparency) of this internecine power play would appear to the outside world?

An Austrian has been fined for yodelling while mowing his lawn, according to a report.

The Kronen Zeitung newspaper claims Helmut G. was told by a court in Graz, Styria, that his yodelling offended his next-door Muslim neighbours.

The men reportedly accused the 63-year-old of having tried to mock and imitate the call of the Muezzin. The daily paper writes the Austrian was fined 800 Euros after judges ruled he could have tried to offend them and ridicule their belief. The Muslims, whose nationalities were not revealed by the report, were right in the middle of a prayer when the Austrian started to yodel.

"It was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood" the man told the newspaper today (Mon).

Intelligence work evidently has two levels – a completely incompetent one that produces WikiLeaks and a brilliant one that produces Stuxnet [the computer bug that wreaked havoc on Iran's nuclear program].

By the same token, airport security has two levels (or strategies)--a completely incompetent one that produces TSA security theatrics (and involves scrutinizing stuff), and a brilliant one that involves scrutinizing people.

As the latest lad hell-bent on jihad has his wings clipped (in, of all places, Oregon), "experts" have stepped forward to account for such anti-social behavior. The defence: these lads are "depraved" on account of they're "deprived." Otherwise known as the "Officer Krupke" rationalization.Writes Daniel Greenfield:

Terrorists are never terrorists. And never Muslim. Even when they're both. They might dress up like Osama bin Laden, quote from the Koran and curse the Great Satan-- but the blowdried anchors in their dollhouse news sets will still blame the whole thing on teenage bullying or PTSD in the water. And who are you really going to believe, the terrorists who happily explain their motives, or a newscaster with two advanced degrees in reading things off a teleprompter?

And so it turns out that the terrorists are human beings just like us who never got enough love. Who are too insecure not to be terrorists. Our job is to make them feel more comfortable and give them a confidence boost. Pat them on the back and tell them how wonderful Islam is and how superior Muslim culture is to our rotten degraded lifestyle. "No need to feel bad, Ahmed. I only wish I could murder my own sister every time I catch her talking to a man." "Leila, I would give up my career and the freedom to travel without a male guardian's permission in a split second just to be able to wear a bag on my head all day."

Because what terrorists need most is appeasement. Appeasement is apparently Muslim Prozac. Give them enough of it, and they'll no longer want to behead us or blow us up. Or so the politically correct theory goes. And there you have our international affairs in a nutshell.

At least one good thing has come out of the WikiLeaks. It has put the U.S. at odds with the UN, as America is being called to account for supposedly violating the execrable internationalist organization's supposed "inviolability." From the Guardian:

The senior American diplomat at the UN tonight defended her team after WikiLeaks disclosed a US spying operation targeting the UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and members of the security council.

Susan Rice, the US ambassador appointed to the UN by Barack Obama last year, appeared uncomfortable and, at times, exasperated as she took questions from the media at the UN today.

She denied US diplomats were engaged in spying. "Let me be very clear: our diplomats are just that," she said. "They are diplomats. That is what they do every day. They get out and work with partners here at the UN and around the world."

Rice was questioned about a leaked US cable showing diplomats were asked to find personal financial details about the UN leadership, including credit card information, passwords for their communications systems and frequent-flier membership. Ban's office hit back at the US with a warning that any violation of UN "immunity" may breach international law.

Rice, speaking after a meeting of the security council today, three times declined to deal directly with questions about the spying.

She insisted the job of US diplomats at the UN and around the world was to "build relations, negotiate, advance our interests and work to find common solutions to complex problems. That's what they do and they do it extremely well, with great integrity, with hard work."

Asked again about WikiLeaks, she said: "I'm not going to get into commenting on classified material or alleged classified material and its contents. I have said what I am going to say."

Senior UN officials, who made representations today to the US government, said they were taken by surprise at the "unusual extent and detail of the activity in the documents", which includes requests for "biometric" information on "key UN officials" and the permanent representatives of the security council from China, Russia, France and the UK.

Sources indicated a formal complaint could follow if and when more information about Washington's secret operation emerges.

Within hours of the release of America's "National Human Intelligence Directive on the United Nations", Farhan Haq, the UN secretary general's acting deputy spokesman, issued a pointed statement reminding member states that the UN relies on their adherence to treaties and agreements about respecting the institution's inviolability...

The notion that the UN is "inviolable" is as absurd as it is problematic. No institution--or law (hello, sharia; howdy-do, Caliphate)--should have that status, because that gives it far too much power over the rest of us, and what sane, freedom-loving person would be prepared to live with that? It is particularly enjoyable to see Susan Rice, the Obama rep, squirm in this way because she and her boss are so committed to the concept of internationalism as it is embodied by the UN, an "inviolable" institution that is beyond corrupt, that is arguably the world's foremost purveyor of Zionhass, and that long ago fell into the hands of the bad guys, the enemies of freedom.

Monday, November 29, 2010

The real solution, of course, is to target the enemy rather than to react serially to his endless cascade of methods, procedures and contrivances. The real solution is to touch the enemy’s junket, not the passenger’s junk. The TSA, for example, obviously needs to hire well-trained and dedicated personnel. It must install fail-safe identity pre-screenings, a proper interrogation system similar to that successfully employed by the Israelis, and stringent profiling of the appropriate demographic. There is no other feasible solution to the dilemma. Both the wider civilian population and the terrorists know this. Only an administration seeking to appease not just its avowed assailants but its own radical base apparently does not, or, what is no less disturbing, is frankly unwilling to activate whatever dwindling resources of intelligence and dignity remain to it. From its perspective, it is preferable to be politically correct and dead rather than morally honest and alive—at least as far as its citizens are concerned.

Both events may color a resumption of talks on nuclear issues next week with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference Iran would attend the talks on December 5, but restated its position that its uranium enrichment program, which it says is purely for power generation, was not negotiable...

In that case, what's the point of resuming "talks" which may or may not be "colored" by the pro-active actions of those who have presumed to derail the non-negotiability of its "power" grab. (A-jad enriching uranium "purely for power generation"? Riiiight. Just like Hitler was supposedly sending Jews "east" for resettlement.)

If wikileaks had hoped to shock and embarrass with its latest round of whistle blowing, it fell far short of the mark with these "shocking" details of diplomats speaking out of school. From the Ceeb:

According to Der Spiegel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler in U.S. diplomatic files.

Other documents show that Israel expressed concerns about Iran's expanding nuclear program, while King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged the U.S. to help the kingdom erode Iran's influence in Iraq, the New York Times said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was nicknamed "the emperor with no clothes" and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is described as "driven by paranoia."

Christopher Dell, who spent three years as ambassador to Zimbabwe, calls Robert Mugabe, the African country's president, "a brilliant tactician" but mocked "his deep ignorance on economic issues."

Okay, that last one, about Mugabe's supposed "brilliance," is kind of shocking. Otherwise, if this is as insightful and trenchant as it gets in Diplomacyland, all I can say is it's a pretty dull place.

Sharia law a threat to our society and way of life? Not so, claims the New York Times, which has apparently never come across the statement "jihad is the way, sharia is the goal," or, if it has, has decided not to take it seriously:

For a few days this month, it was illegal in Oklahoma for a state judge to base a court decision on Islamic religious law or consider any form of international law. It was a manufactured problem; the issue has never come up in the state’s courts. But more than 70 percent of voters in Oklahoma still approved a state constitutional amendment to that effect, apparently persuaded by anti-Islamic activists, and a few cynical politicians, that Oklahoma was about to be brought under Islam’s heel.

After Muslim groups challenged the constitutionality of the “Save Our State Amendment,” a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order. Last Monday, the judge, Vicki Miles-LaGrange, held a hearing to determine whether to issue a preliminary injunction against the measure, and said she would make a decision by the end of November. A federal injunction is warranted to save Oklahoma from its pernicious folly and to prevent other states from following the same path.

Islam-bashing for political gain was a chilling feature of this year’s campaign. The proposed Islamic center and mosque in downtown Manhattan was publicly announced last year, but no one paid much attention until activists began loudly denouncing it in the middle of the midterm election campaign. Right-wing groups then made commercials attacking several Democratic candidates for respecting the First Amendment and saying they had no problems with the project.

Islamic law, known as Shariah, is no threat to our legal system and is not in force anywhere in the United States except within a religious community, in the same manner as Jewish Halakhic law or Catholic canon law...

Not in force--yet. But maintain the same blaséattitude and frame the issue as one of "tolerance" (when, clearly, it's about fending off a totalitarian system grounded in religious doctrine), and it'll come into effect soon enough.

Melanie Phillips has noticed that Official Jewry (being largely lefty, and therefore given to perambulating with their noggins lodged firmly up the fundament) is pretty much the same on both sides of the pond (H/T MK):

On a recent speaking tour in Montreal and Toronto, I was struck by the beleaguered state of many Canadian Jews.

They were battling the usual mad barrage against Israel from the media, politicians on the left and rabid anti-Israel and Judeophobic lies and libels on campus.

Home from home, in other words.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect was that they appeared not to possess the verbal ammunition with which to respond.

It seemed to me that, as I wrote here last month, the problem was that to a greater or lesser extent they themselves had been sucked into the narrative of lies.

Because so many were centrist or liberally-minded folk, they accepted a premise they quite mistakenly thought represented the ‘centre ground’.

That premise was that the settlements were the big problem. That inevitably paints Israel as the bad guy in the region. So these Israel defenders are forced onto the defensive. And once there, the argument is all but lost.

But as I put to them, Israel has actually done nothing to be defensive about. It is instead Israel’s attackers who are murderous aggressors who refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state, even though settlements have been evacuated and territory offered up as a compromise.

So I suggested they should rethink their entire approach. Change the narrative. Get off the back foot and put Israel’s attackers onto theirs.

Refuse to argue on the Israel-bashers’ chosen ground. Disdain them socially. Take their words and their reputations apart. Treat them as pariahs for their bigotry. And so on.

The response was startling. For these Canadian Jews were amazed. No-one, it seemed, had ever suggested any of this to them before.

Suddenly they saw a way out of the box. Suddenly they saw how they could reclaim for Israel not just the language but the great cause itself of truth, law and justice...

I think Melanie is being overly optimistic. Once you're stuck in the internationalist/multiculturalist/"social justice"/"human rights"/"bridge building" box (really, a big house of mirrors) it's almost impossible to break free. To do so requires an epiphany that changes one's entire world view, and how likely is that for folks who believe the lefty way and the way of virtue are synonymous?

Sunday, November 28, 2010

So claims an immensely self-satisfied Pakistani tribal leader in this interview (translated by MEMRI). Further, he says there are currently 70,000 Arab mujahedeen in the lawless tribal regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that Osama and his Al Qaeda #2 (the guy with the angry red prayer blotch on his forehead) frequently lead Friday prayers at area mosques (though never in the same mosque at the same time). At one point in this reality show (one which beatsThe Real Housewives of New Jersey all to hell), someone hands the chieftain a wad of cash which he quickly places in an inside pocket. When the interviewer asks him about it, he tells her it is "charity" money from Kuwait.

You see, I attended Junior High School in Chicago in the 80’s. I don’t know if this still is the case, however, in order to graduate from junior high school I had to study the U.S. Constitution which I wasn’t too happy about at the time, but which has subsequently influenced my thinking. Can you imagine the impact of studying the Constitution on a young girl in junior high school? The most important part for me of the Constitution is the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. That is a right that is so precious and I will always hope for a similar constitution in Europe. Of course there is no First Amendment, nothing similar to that even though the EU prides itself in guaranteeing freedom of speech. We desperately need a First Amendment. However, I cannot see with the current political situation in Europe that there will be a First Amendment. It is not in the interest of the elite.

In Karachi, politics is conducted with Kalashnikovs. The major parties maintain gangs of thugs and killers to protect their spheres of influence. Armed men dressed in suits stand in front of the heavily guarded headquarters of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). The party represents the Urdu-speaking immigrants who came to Pakistan from the Indian part of British India after partition in 1947. Today they have their own courts and their own security service, representing a parallel system to that of the state's, according to the police.

The Awami National Party (ANP), which represents the Pashtuns, has also become a powerful force. The two parties accuse one another of constantly inciting violence. Since October, about 100 people have been killed here for political reasons, most of them provincial members of parliament and party officials. The death squads travel on motorcycles and shoot their victims while driving or stab them to death with knives.

The militias are fighting each other for the dominance of individual apartment blocks and streets, for shares of the drug and weapons trade, for votes, for shakedowns or sometimes simply for honor. Even the liberal Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is supported by its own trigger-happy militia in its stronghold of Lyari, a drab neighborhood of narrow streets near the harbor.

All are perpetrators and victims alike in this megacity of grotesque contradictions. Vastly wealthy families live in their villas, protected by high walls, while the barefoot children of the poorest of the poor play football in the garbage heaps of the rich. Young urbanites like the shrill TV host Ali Saleem, 31, who says he wants to "party, party, party until the end," crave a freer, Western lifestyle. Meanwhile, in large Koran schools a few blocks away, thousands of students are being indoctrinated into an extreme interpretation of the Koran -- and taught to hate the American way of life.

David Warren explains why we dismiss the 'crazies' who bestride the world stage at our peril (a lesson we should have learned long ago):

The "completely crazy guy" theory of history explains nothing, and is useless. Hitler was a crazy guy; Stalin was a crazy guy; Pol Pot was a crazy guy -- but mad only north-northwest. Often from a desperate position, they played brilliantly, cheated brilliantly.

One does not become a psychotic, totalitarian dictator without knowing all the weaknesses of half-decent folk, including the location of their Achilles heel. Our politicians are willing to appease even a madman, for the sake of peace. And even when peace is unavailable, those with insufficient moral starch will continue appeasing, in the hope of prolonging the appearance of peace.

Undercover agents in a sting operation stopped a Somali-born teenager from blowing up a van full of explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, federal authorities said.

The bomb was a dud supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,"

The FBI affidavit that outlined the investigation alleges that Mohamud planned the attack for months, at one point mailing bomb components to FBI operatives, whom he believed were assembling the device.

It said Mohamud was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could be killed, and that he could back out, but he told agents: "Since I was 15 I thought about all this;" and "It's gonna be a fireworks show ... a spectacular show."...

No luscious virgins for you, Mo Mo. But, hey, with good behaviour maybe you'll be out in a flash, like this guy.

Friday, November 26, 2010

The haircutting incident at a Thunder Bay school that prevented a First Nation boy from following his traditional dancing practices is going before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

“It was traumatic for him, it was traumatic for the family,” said Julian Falconer, explaining the seven-year-old boy did not participate in traditional dancing for “some time” after his hair was cut by a teacher’s assistant at McKellar Park School in April 2009.

The family asked for accountability and were demeaned for doing it, that somehow they were in it for the money, Falconer said.

“How bizarre is that? If it were anybody else’s child, I can absolutely assure you they would have asked for and gotten accountability,” Falconer, a Toronto-based lawyer known for human rights and public interest litigation, said.

Falconer, who is representing the boy’s family, said suggestions that the family is following through with the case just for the money are “pretty offensive.”

“If you have a child and a teacher forces that child to submit to that teacher’s will, including having their hair cut, hair that was grown for ceremonial purposes, why wouldn’t you be entitled to hold those accountable that put your child and your family through it?” Falconer said.

“It’s just another example of how somehow First Nations are not supposed to be entitled to accountability and others are.”

First Nation leaders had called for an investigation into the issue shortly after the haircutting incident happened, including Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse, who said First Nations want to understand why and how the incident happened and ensure it never happens again.

“For First Nations, this is a painful and harsh reminder of what our children suffered in the residential schools, where braids were cut as part of the overall denigration of our people and culture,” Toulouse said...

M'kay. By the way, the teacher's aide--who was suspended following the snip snip (as well she should have been; she had no right to take it upon herself to trim a student's hair)--seems to have cut only the kid's bangs. And it sounds like she did so not as part of any overall denigration of aboriginal culture, but because the poor kid couldn't flipping see.

the ingrained servility of British Jewish leaders, who believe in working behind the scenes in trying to influence the great and the good rather than putting their heads above the parapet and making their case in public, explains why they have so conspicuously failed to stand up in public against the madness over Israel that has engulfed Britain and the west. But the reality is far, far worse than that. By endorsing the positions of those who are demonising and delegitimising Israel through echoing their distortions, decontextualisations and grotesquely inverted morality, it has now become clear that Britain’s most senior Jewish community leadersheep are simply, and tragically, on the wrong side.

"Leadersheep"--good one! And sheep is the operative word for Canadian Jews who support Twiggy's Libs, deluding themselves into thinking that, when push comes to shove, the man and his party won't tell the Jews and Israel to shove it.

Tarek Fatah claims that Islamic Judenhass is fueled by "myths" in hadiths and a biography of Muhammad and not by the Koran itself--a claim that is simply not true (which is to say completely false). Andrew Bostom, who put together the work of scholarship on the subject--and what a doorstopper it is--puts that bollocks to bed here:

The central anti-Jewish motif in the Koran is found in verse 2:61, repeated at verse 3:112. This is where the Jews are accused of slaying the Prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah, and so they are condemned and cursed eternally. Verse 2.61 says ‘shame and misery’ are ‘stamped upon them.’ And this verse is coupled to verses like 5:60, and other verses about the Jews being transformed into apes and pigs, which is part of their curse. Verse 5:78 describes the curse upon the Jews by David and Jesus, Mary’s son. There is a related verse, 5:64, which accuses the Jews of being spreaders of war and corruption, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas cited this verse during a diatribe against the Jews of Israel, in 2007.) More generally, the Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process.

It was the Brits who were the first to be suckered by a con man pretending to be a Taliban bigwig, reports Reuters:

A man posing as a Taliban leader who had talks with Afghanistan's president was paid and promoted by British intelligence, a newspaper said on Friday.

British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents paid Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour from May this year, believing they had achieved an "historic breakthrough" in forging contacts between the Taliban and the Afghan government, The Times said.

"Far from being a former Taliban government minister, the individual concerned is now thought to have been a shopkeeper, a minor Taliban commander, or simply a well-connected chancer from the Pakistani border city of Quetta," it said.

"The British were convinced of the man's bona fides and flew "Mansour" from Quetta to Kabul on a British C130 transport aircraft on a number of occasions," it reported...

Fooling the kafir? As easy as shootin' fish in a barrel. Can't wait to see the movie--with Sacha Baron Cohen playing the fraudster, perhaps?

Spain's former prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, is scheduled to speak at York University next week. Here are the details:

Monday November 29, 3:30pm

York University, Founders Assembly Hall (map)

With Israel’s right to exist questioned daily, there are, fortunately, prominent individuals who are confronting this disturbing trend. Among them is the former Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar.

That’s why we urge you to join UJA Federation, Hillel of Greater Toronto and other co-sponsoring organizations listed below for a special presentation by Mr. Aznar, founder of the Friends of Israel Initiative:

Please stand up for Israel by attending this presentation, co- sponsored by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, Hillel of Greater Toronto, Canadian Network for Israel Affairs, Christians United for Israel, Hasbara @ York and Hasbara Fellowships.

RSVP is a must. Please email Leigh Brown or call (416) 634.3065.

So do you think it will go ahead, or will "security concerns" shut down yet another "controversial" speaker?

Thursday, November 25, 2010

How often in the past few days have I heard some expert or another insist that Israeli-style airport security tactics could never be applied here in North America? Israel, so the "thinking" goes, has a mere x number of incoming flights while we here in North America have gazillions of them. The number differential alone makes the Israeli way inapplicable here saith the scope 'n' grope promoters.

Israeli security succeeds by questioning every passenger. What is the purpose of your trip? Who packed your bags? Where will you be staying? The security agents are all army veterans (well, nearly everyone in Israel is), have college degrees, and are fired immediately if they make a mistake. They learn psychological profiles of terrorists as well as how to detect things — like the Irish lady traveling to meet her fiancé’s family without him. That don’t smell right.

While it’s true that Israel has about 1/60th of the air traffic that we do, and it may not be feasible to undertake exactly that kind of examination in our country, we could at least attempt to apply the principle: looking for terrorists rather than weapons. How much longer would it take to ask each passenger a few questions than it does to put them all through the full-body scanner or subject them to a pat-down? Some travelers will be questioned more extensively, but on balance, it probably wouldn’t add any time to the average trip and might even speed it up. And the invasion of privacy would be much less offensive.

Had the Israeli method of probing the person not the stuff been in effect after 9/11, we would not now be forced to participate in all the empty security rituals we have come to know and hate (the ones we go through mostly so we'll feel safe enough to fly)--the sacred removal of the shoes; the display of the precious holy liquids contained in tiny bottles; the dreadful scope 'n' grope scourging.

In brief: do not take your freedom for granted, because there are those who are intent on taking it away and enslaving you:

...We are still, for the moment, free. I am able to write this, you are able to read it. With an Obama Administration repeatedly on record favoring restrictions on the freedom of speech, we should never take for granted that those who are threatened by Islamic supremacism and jihad will always be able to speak freely about that threat -- and that includes Americans as well.

So we must work hard to defend freedom, and to ensure that murderous thugs like the people who wrote me these emails do not prevail. Work hard. Make the most of every moment.

Give thanks today that you are free. Take a moment to savor all the things that make life worth living, and freedom worth defending. And then set out again to work, to do whatever you can, wherever you are, in whatever situation you're in, to turn back the tide of Islamic supremacist encroachment upon free societies everywhere.

Those are just a few of the, erm, "Asians" who were not involved in what, for the sake of not giving offense or eliciting ire, is being described as an "Asian gang of predators" that "abused and raped up to 100 girls as young as ten."

Who can take tomorrowMake it more insane?Now we're gettin' groped 'n' scoped--I think I'll take the train.The Pantyman.The Pantyman can.The Pantyman can 'cause he's so mixed up by hateAnd he is fighting jihad.

MANADO, Indonesia — A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government. Flags of Israel can be spotted on motorcycle taxi stands, one near a six-year-old synagogue that has received a face-lift, including a ceiling with a large Star of David, paid for by local officials.

A 62 foot tall minorah, possibly the largest one in the world and built on a mountain overlooking Manado, was paid for by the local government.

Long known as a Christian stronghold and more recently as home to evangelical and charismatic Christian groups, this area on the fringes of northern Indonesia has become the unlikely setting for increasingly public displays of pro-Jewish sentiments as some people have embraced the faith of their Dutch Jewish ancestors. With the local governments’ blessing, they are carving out a small space for themselves in the sometimes strangely shifting religious landscape of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.

The trend comes as extremist Islamic groups have grown bolder in assailing Christian and other religious minorities elsewhere in Indonesia, with the central government, fearful of offending Muslim groups, doing little to prevent the attacks. Last November, extremists protesting the 2008-9 war in Gaza shut down what had been the most prominent remnant of Indonesia’s historic but little-known Jewish community, a century-old synagogue in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city.

That left the synagogue in a town just outside Manado — founded by Indonesians still struggling to learn about Judaism and now attended by about 10 people — as Indonesia’s sole surviving Jewish house of worship. Before reaching out for help to sometimes suspicious Jewish communities outside Indonesia, they researched Judaism at an Internet cafe here. They turned, they said jokingly, to Rabbi Google for answers. They compiled a Torah by printing pages off the Internet. They sought the finer points of davening on YouTube.

“We’re just trying to be good Jews,” said Toar Palilingan, 27, who, wearing a black coat and a broad-brimmed hat in the ultra-Orthodox style, led a Sabbath dinner at his family home recently with two regulars...

As the hoi polloi are treated to the equivalent of a sexual assault before they can board an airplane, the political elites (our wisers and betters) get waived through security with their junk untouched.

If a mob disrupted a pro-choice speaker at a Canadian university, chances are the protesters would be removed. If a mob disrupted a pro-life speaker at a Canadian university, chances are the speech would be cancelled.

History has shown that when "virtue" reigns, freedom rots. You would think that, of all places, universities (bastions of learning; repositories of world wisdom) would have some familiarity with that truth.

“Engagement” is such a windy word, as in: President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement at the United Nations Human Rights Council. It all sounds so abstract. What does that really mean?

Well, on Nov. 5, it became less abstract, when the Obama administration bellied up to the microphones in the chamber of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, to present America’s human rights record for review by the assembled eminences. Whatever amount of engagement the administration had engaged in, it did nothing to deter the likes of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, China and Libya from making use of their UN privileges to savage the United States. The UN makes video of these proceedings available for all the world to look in on. Despots can of course cull the contributions of their own envoys for broadcast back home — show-casing under UN auspices any propaganda that they and their chums wish to spread about America. And Americans, of course, can also look in on these videos, just in case they want to see what’s being done with the tax dollars spent on their behalf to help bankroll the UN and pay for the delegations the Obama administration sends to represent — and in this case, apologize for — America. But if you work for a living, at something other than following the UN… well, who has time to plod through hours of speechifying in some UN chamber in Geneva?

So, thank you to Anne Bayefsky, whose watchdog organization, http://www.eyeontheun.org/ , has put together a montage of top hits of the UN Human Rights Council’s Nov. 5 review of the United States. You can watch the entire compilation of highlights in just a couple of minutes, including the comments of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, China Libya, Qatar, Nicaragua, Egypt, etc. — trashing and vilifying America over human rights. The most interesting part of the show, however, is the U.S. delegation, telling this crowd what a pleasure and an honor it is for America to present itself for review, and thanking them for the experience. If you want to know what Obama’s policy of engagement at the UN really looks like, up close and graphic, this is a must-see video; your diplomats on the front lines, and your tax dollars at work.

On the cusp of Thanksgiving, an American gives thanks that he lives in a land that has a First Amendment to safeguard his free speech, and not in Canada which has no such protections (and where, as a consequence, the freedom to speak is being eroded by the minute--in no small part due to the "human rights" racket and its champions, one of whom just scored a victory over free speech blabbermouth Ezra Levant):

Levant, wisely, hasn’t said a word about the verdict. Neither have many of other Canadian bloggers from whom we’d expect to hear after a travesty like this. They’re probably taking stock of their options, with their lawyers, because they’re being sued by the censors themselves.

And that’s the point. Vigna didn’t file this suit to salvage his reputation. A prosecutor who would beg off from trial by whining about his inner feelings will have no reputation to save once word gets out. Vigna filed this suit to stifle Levant’s legitimate criticism of his agency and his methods. To make an example of Levant, and to warn more timid souls who would dare to criticize the censors of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. To censor an inconvenient critic who couldn’t be silenced by the usual accusation of hate speech.

And so I sit here, safe in my American home, writing of Ezra Levant’s misfortune in living in a country where he could be bankrupted for making a small mistake of fact in criticizing the actions of a government official. A government official who could sue me for saying many of the same things, had I the misfortune to live in his miserable country.

Oh, it's not so bad, really. We have all that "diversity" and "multiculturalism" and those "Somali mentorship programs" to talk about if and when the censors get their knickers in a knot 'cause we're speaking "hate" (i.e. criticizing censorship, the "human rights" juggernaut, the jihad imperative and/or Jennifer Lynch's spending habits).

More than two centuries ago, Edmund Burke warned about the dangers of new people with new power. This administration, only halfway through its term, has demonstrated that in many ways.

What other administration has had an Attorney General call the American People "cowards"? And refuse to call terrorists Islamic? What other administration has had a Secretary of Homeland Security warn law enforcement officials across the country of security threats from people who are anti-abortion, for federalism or are returning military veterans?

If anything good comes out of the airport "security" outrages, it may be in opening the eyes of more people to the utter contempt that this administration has for the American people.

A BBC TV investigation has revealed that private Muslim schools in the U.K. are teaching the Saudi curriculum of Judenhass and sharia lore. The Brit response, of course, is to aver that such teachings have no place in the U.K., and that what's needed is for the government to keep better tabs on what's being taught in all faith schools. (Wouldn't want to "discriminate," right?) Melanie Phillips thinks that's bollocks, since these wacky Wahhabi-funded schools represent but one tiny aspect of the much larger Saudi game plan to undermine and Islamize the West:

What John Ware’s fine report has revealed is merely the tip of an enormous iceberg on which the UK Titanic has holed itself below the waterline. The most extreme material he discovered was in part-time weekend and evening Islamic schools, which are teaching from textbooks provided by Saudi Arabia and which teach the school curriculum of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the wellspring of the Sunni Islam jihad against the free world. It is a foaming geyser of fanatical Islamic bigotry against unbelievers and especially Jews. It was Saudi Wahabbism that radicalised the Muslims of Pakistan who, when they immigrated in large number into Britain in the 1980s, accordingly imported with them jihadi educational institutions -- which then radicalised Muslim children born and bred in the UK and turned them into fanatics, often to the utter dismay of their parents.

Saudi Arabia isn’t just behind some part-time Muslim schools in Britain. It is funding Islamic studies at British universities, subverting the very basis of objective western scholarship by turning such courses into fanatical religious propaganda. Saudi Arabia is also funding extremist mosques in Britain. Saudi Arabia is also promoting sharia banking in Britain. Saudi Arabia is also helpfully establishing partnerships with more and more cash-strapped British and multinational companies.

In short, Saudi Arabia is buying up Britain and establishing within it an ever-expanding bridgehead for sedition in the furtherance of jihad and the ultimate goal of Islamisation. The most important measure to be taken to rid British schools of the scourge identified by John Ware is not to beef up Ofsted or improve ‘due diligence’ in enforcing English law against extremism. It is to ban all Saudi funding of such schools – indeed, to ban all Saudi funding of British educational and religious institutions.

Imam Delic was born in Bosnia. He holds a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. His doctoral thesis focused on tasks and activities relevant to building bridges between the Canadian Muslim community and mainstream Canadian society, in hopes of creating more cohesive cooperation among all Canadians.

He has given hundreds of talks at colleges, universities, and embassies. Recently, he has become well known for a talk he did not give at a forum hosted by the Department of National Defense. He will speak with us about faith as a source of hope and not fear; the metaphor of openness of door, hands, heart, mind ... and yes, openness of faith.

The guy they thought was a big time Taliban mullah was actually a con man who, after a few chats, took the cash and bolted. From the Beeb:

An impostor posing as a leading Taliban negotiator held secret talks with Afghan officials, according to the New York Times.

The Afghans thought they were dealing with Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, a top Taliban commander.

But he was not Mullah Mansour and may not even have been a member of the Taliban, reports the newspaper.

He was paid "a lot of money", and then disappeared, according to diplomatic sources.
The man in question came from Pakistan - where it is thought the Taliban's leadership is based - and reportedly had three meetings with government officials...

Monday, November 22, 2010

The head of the UN's slimy climate racket is shocked--shocked, he says!--by the "unexpected" uproar over more false climate change info, reports the Guardian:

The head of the UN climate science body has admitted he was taken entirely by surprise by the ferocious public reaction to a blunder in its report on Himalayan glaciers. But he insisted the controversy had not set back efforts to secure action on climate change.

The mistake, a false assertion that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, exacted severe damage to the reputation of the IPCC and its head, Rajendra Pachauri. It also provided further fuel to the controversy over the emails stolen from East Anglia's climate research unit and released online a year ago today.

Pachauri said he had not predicted the storm of criticism. "I had absolutely no idea what was coming. It just sort of escalated," Pachauri told the Guardian at a climate meeting sponsored by California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Pachauri initially dismissed the first challenge to the accuracy of the 2007 report on melting of the Himalayas as "voodoo science". It took two months for the IPCC to acknowledge that the assertion on glaciers was based on flimsy data – a quote given to journalists – and should never have made it into the report.

"In retrospect we should have had a much better capacity at the IPCC to deal with this kind of thing," Pachauri said this week...

You've got to give Imam Zijad Delic, the Canadian Islamic Congress's second-in-command, credit. After the goverment up and cancelled his "outreach" speech during the CIC-helmed Islamic Let's Rewrite History Month, he could have grumbled and whinged about the unfairness of it all. Instead, he picked himself up, dusted off the old "interfaith" line, and got right back on the tasty samosas circuit. From the Montreal Gazette:

OTTAWA — An imam whose speech in the nation’s capital was cancelled by Defence Minister Peter MacKay told a public gathering Sunday that having a conversation, even a difficult one, is always better than avoiding it.

Imam Zijad Delic has been giving talks at community groups and in libraries since MacKay cancelled his speech in Ottawa in early October.

“Civilized people talk and get involved in discourse, no matter how difficult,” he told a packed congregation Sunday at the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa.

“Uncivilized people don’t want to talk.”

Delic is executive director of the Canadian Islamic Conference.

He had been scheduled to speak at National Defence headquarters during Islamic History Month, at an event with folk dancing and cooking.

But MacKay’s office cancelled the event because a previous leader of the Canadian Islamic Congress (not Zelic) had advocated killing Jewish Israelis.

Zelic has a long record of condemning terrorism and violence. The imam said Sunday that a reporter had asked him whether he was angry about the cancellation.

“Not angry,” he said. “I am disappointed but not angry. When people are angry they can’t see past the end of their nose.

“That misunderstanding definitely was not a good move for this beautiful Canadian society. It has made some dents,” he said.

“But I think there is a positive that came out of there. I have received such support from politicians, bureaucrats, educational institutions, (and) religious groups.

“Hundreds of letters have been sent to politicians (and) the papers. So government has to realize that this moderate voice that is present — and I’m not talking about hundreds of people, but thousands — needs to be listened to.”

Cancelling the speech sent a message to young Muslims, he said...

Yes, and the message was: "Please don't try to spin us with the 'dialogue' bollocks when you believe in the primacy of sharia law and are praying for the demise of Israel." Not surprisingly, the message appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

An Oklahoma judge is considering a lawsuit brough by a CAIR member who thinks it would be really crappy if that state banned sharia:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal judge in Oklahoma will decide whether to block a constitutional amendment that prohibits state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.

Monday's hearing is on a request for a preliminary injunction against the new amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution. The measure was approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in the Nov. 2 general election.

It is being challenged in a lawsuit filed by Muneer Awad who is executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. Awad alleges the measure stigmatizes his religion and would invalidate his will...

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he isn't referring to his "last will and testament." More likely he's talking about his will to power as articulated in the line "jihad is the way; sharia is the goal." If the judge doesn't tell him to take his "will" and stick it where the corn is as high as an elephant's eye, Oklahoma--and, indeed, the U.S. and Western civ. as a whole--are in deepest dung.

In order to wrest maximum sympathy for our homie, Omie, a Ceeb "analysis" makes sure to include a photo of the lad when he was a bright-eyed, tousle-haired moppet. The photo is captioned

When Omar Khadr, seen here when he was nine years old, lived with his family in Pakistan, his father Ahmed was being held by Pakistani authorities. Khadr met Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who was visiting Pakistan in January 1996. Chrétien asked Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to ensure Ahmed received a fair trial.

Why, how nice of that nice Prime Minister Chretien to help that nice Khadr family during its, er, difficulties with Pakistani authorities.

The truth, of course, is far less anodyne (the Ceeb wrote it up here):

Ahmed Said Khadr's wife and some of their children came to Chrétien's hotel in Islamabad to plead the case of her husband. The oldest son, Abdullah, who was 15 at the time, remembers his encounter with the Canadian prime minister.

"He told me that 'once I was a son of a farmer, and I became prime minister. Maybe one day you will become one.' That was a nice compliment."

Jean Chrétien raised the Khadr case with the Pakistani prime minister at the time, Benazir Bhutto, and within weeks, Ahmed Said Khadr was released. He resumed his life, which he claimed was devoted to charity work in Afghanistan.

He raised money in Canada that he said he was using to provide food and schooling to Afghan orphans.

U.S. and Canadian Intelligence sources, however, identified Ahmed Said Khadr as a close associate of Osama bin Laden.

Now for the first time, members of the Khadr family admit that bin Laden and Ahmed Said Khadr were old friends. They fought together during the Afghanistan war in the 1980s.

But only the rich, philanthropic ones who endow it with loads of moolah.The other ones--the ones who, say, protest George Galloway's speech on campus--are dissed and threatened with lawsuits. Write Ezra Levant:

Last Wednesday, [York U prez Mamdouh] Shoukri’s university hosted a speech by George Galloway, the disgraced former MP from the UK. On a trip to Gaza, Galloway was filmed handing wads of cash to Hamas, an illegal terrorist group.

Shoukri had no problem with Galloway speaking on his campus. But when Aaron Hoch, a local Jewish rabbi, criticized Galloway and encouraged people to participate in a peaceful protest against him, Shoukri leapt into action.

He had the university’s lawyer fax a letter to the rabbi at his synagogue, demanding he take down his criticisms from his website. And Shoukri went further, claiming that encouraging people to peacefully protest against Galloway “may constitute criminal activity.”

Seriously.

So Galloway and his fellow Hamas supporters were free to have the run of the university. Shoukri even provided them with security.

But if Torontonians dared counter-protest, they could be charged with crimes.

And then there’s the icing on the cake: Shoukri demanded a written apology from Rabbi Hoch. Hoch claimed Shoukri was insufficiently concerned about Galloway’s anti-semitism and harassment of Jewish students on campus. To show just how concerned he was, Shoukri demanded the rabbi shut up.

That’s how it works back in Egypt, where Shoukri comes from. Anti-Semitic groups get official podiums from which to speak, and Jews are silenced. But that’s not how we do it in Canada.

That's not how we used to do it in Canada. Today "shut up, you uppity Jew/wicked right winger" is pretty much business as usual.

Please Visit

Followers

About Me

Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.